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Recently some people have asked me if I have stoped working on the Claim Bank Charges Back site.

As a result, I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am still working on this site, and adding new news stories etc.

Unfortunately, although the court case back in February 2008 to determine if bank charges are legal or not finished a couple of weeks ago, a final verdict has not been reached by the Judge.

When the trial ended the Judge said it would take a while for him to reach a verdict, purely because of the amount of paperwork the banks submitted to try and support their case, as well as delaying proceedings, although no deadline has been set for th result.. Because of this, everything is still in limbo and there have been no recent news article or developments.

I do check on the situation on a daily basis, and any relevant content is added to the site.

As soon as the verdict is reached, it will posted on this site, as well as any relevant news reports.

Hopefully normal service will be resuming soon!

Having studied the 2007 annual accounts of leading UK’s banks, the BBC estimates that during the year, over £750 million was repaid to customers who demanded the return of charges made for breaching their overdraft limits.

Five leading High Street banks alone have paid back a combined £549 million, broken down as follows: Lloyds TSB £76 million; Barclays £116 million; HBOS £122 million; RBS Natwest £119 million; HSBC £116 million.

However, worse may follow because it is estimated that UK banks could be liable to pay a further £1.37 billion for 2007, if the Office of Fair Trading is successful in a High Court test case brought to establish the legality of the charges.

Many claims by customers have been put on hold, awaiting a judgement in the court case, and the BBC calculates that a further £1.37 billion could have been paid out by the banks last year if the court had not granted a stay on new cases and some already in hand.

The stay does not prevent consumers registering new claims or banks making goodwill payments where there are special circumstances.

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The OFT's test case on unauthorised bank default charges will start on Thursday 17 January at 10.30am at the International Dispute Resolution Centre.
The case was due to begin on Wednesday at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, but was postponed due to the Judge's prior commitments running over.

The purpose of the application is to get a ruling on whether the provisions of the UTCCRs (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations) that deal with unfairness, apply to unauthorised overdraft charges, and will not address whether terms and conditions or specific charges of individual banks are unfair.

The OFT said, however, that it continued to analyse information supplied by the banks. It added that further information on the investigation into unfairness would be published after the judgment had been delivered and OFT had had time to consider any implications.

The application for the declaration is brought against Abbey National plc, Barclays Bank plc, Clydesdale Bank plc, HBOS plc, HSBC Bank plc, Lloyds TSB Bank plc, Nationwide Building Society and Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc.

The hearing is expected to last three weeks with judgment to follow some time later.

The OFT has published more information about the case and has a website section that explains more about the work on bank personal current accounts, available at the link below.